


Nine Minutes

by tinygwemlin



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Episode: s10e06 My Struggle II, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Post-Episode: s10e06 My Struggle II, S11 didn’t happen, Timeline Resets, Trauma, inspired by Monday but on a larger scale, major and minor character deaths will occur, quite a lot of angst initially, some may be resolved while others won’t, time loops, will add additional tags as story progresses, will pass through multiple episodes / seasons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:34:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27395047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinygwemlin/pseuds/tinygwemlin
Summary: She turns to him, mouth open, ready to ask how the hell she ended up sitting beside him in the car when she was standing outside on the bridge just moments ago.Then she realises they’re not on the bridge.They’re not in the same car.And he is not the same Mulder.****Forced to relive her life over and over, resuming from the same fixed point each time, Scully fights to figure out why this is happening, and what exactly the universe wants changed.*Set after the My Struggle ii bridge scene and will run through the series / films. Rating will likely change to explicit later on down the line*
Relationships: Fox Mulder & Dana Scully, Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36





	1. New Beginnings

She’s here, at his side. At the very least, they are together when the end seems nearer than it ever has before. But it is little comfort given his current state. He’s so close to death, she can practically feel the Reaper looming over them, and there is nothing she can do to keep it at bay.

She and Agent Miller stand with their backs to Mulder. The younger agent stoops near to her so neither has to shout over the clamour of the other pedestrians on the bridge. She’s grateful for both Miller’s consideration and the noise; Mulder can’t hear her as she explains just how bad his condition is, and how the only person who could help save him is gone.

“I don’t know where he is.” She tells Miller, who all but disappears from her sight when she thinks of William. A memory from a lifetime ago wedges itself like a screen between her and her horrible reality. For a moment, she is in her old apartment, baby William cradled in her arms while Mulder holds them both. The scene is potent — just that quick flash is enough to get her drunk on nostalgia over a time that, while not perfect, felt right. Since then, it has been as though every choice led further and further down the wrong path.

_Click_. Like the sound of a stage light switching on, loud enough it seems to reverberate through her very bones. The screen between her and now shatters, forcing her back to this unbearable and unchangeable present. A bright white light shines down on her and Miller from high above. It is magnetic, drawing her gaze to it despite the pain looking into it brings. It sears like a white-hot flame, not only burning her eyes but her mind as well. 

She is unable to look away; physically cannot. Not when the crowd on the bridge descends into anarchy as they run from the light and whatever casts it, some bumping into her as they scramble to the ends of the bridge. Not when Miller shakes her, hard, by the shoulder. Not even when he yells close to her ear, desperate now, fighting his own fear and need to flee like the others as he tries to save her. She barely registers his voice. Or presence. For some inexplicable reason, she feels none of his or the others’ fear. Instead she is calm, frighteningly so.

_Click_. The crowd and Miller are gone. For a frozen second, there is only the light and total silence.

Then, out of nowhere, Mulder’s voice sounds in her ear, startling her. Gone is the rasp sickness brought to it, as are the notes of utter defeat and exhaustion that came with the approach of death. Now, he sounds incredulous, almost joyous, as he talks of what they’ve lost: “ _Brakes, steering, everything_.”

She blinks quickly, raises her hands to rub at her eyes. The haze before them dissipates like mist in sunlight, revealing to her the dark interior of a car.

“We lost nine minutes.” Mulder’s voice again, now underpinned by thundering rain.

She barely registers his words, focused as she is on her surroundings. How they are not the same as they were less than a minute ago.

“I looked at my watch just before the flash and it was nine-oh-three. It just turned nine-thirteen.”

She turns to him, mouth open, ready to ask how the hell she ended up sitting beside him in the car when she was standing outside on the bridge just moments ago.

Then she realises they’re not on the bridge.

They’re not in the same car.

And he is not the same Mulder.

“Scully?” He asks. It asks… She doesn’t know what to think, whether it’s an it or a him. But it is not Mulder. Not _her_ Mulder. Her Mulder has those lines around his eyes and mouth, ones he’s embarrassed over but she is indifferent to because they’re just another part of him and their history. Her Mulder has those flecks of grey showing in his hair, strands she’ll giggle at and tell him he missed when he dyed it, him refusing to willingly go grey while she is adamant and honest in telling him she likes him as a silver Fox. Her Mulder, the father of her son, their son. Her Mulder, who she saw just moments ago, at death’s door…

The face she sees is Mulder’s, just one she hasn’t seen for decades.

Before she can think, she’s moving. She’s out of the car and down the road before he even has his door open. The rain is cold on her face and neck, and she’s glad for the waterproof coat, even though she knows she wasn’t wearing it before. It wasn’t raining before, either — the sky on the bridge was clear.

“Hey, Scully! What’s wrong?”

It’s pouring. Her hair is dripping already, plastering itself to her face as she tries in vain to think. She keeps walking when he catches up to her, but stops short when the realisation hits her.

They’ve been here before.

“Scully?” 

Her mind races, hits every hurdle it encounters. She can’t comprehend it, let alone form a coherent enough sentence to answer.

“Scully?” 

He puts a hand on her shoulder, recoils in surprise at her resulting flinch. The hand falls to his side as the other reaches up to wipe away the water dripping from his sodden hair and into his eyes. Hurt but respectful of her rejection, he does not try to reach for her again, though concern has etched itself onto his features.

“What happened?” She asks, deja vu so strong it is nauseating. She knows how this went; if this were the same night, how it should go. And though the memory is engraved in her mind -how could she forget their first case, after all?- the more she thinks of it the more it fades. Like a dream you try to recall after waking, all grasping at it seems to do is push it further out of reach.

His taunt features relax a little, though still concerned he does not smile. “We lost nine minutes.” A small crease forms between his brows. “What made you walk off?”

A pause. She can’t explain this to herself, let alone someone else. Especially someone other than Mulder. Her Mulder. “I-I don’t know.”

Disbelief is clear on his face. “Scully-“

“Please, I... I honestly don’t.” Her head is pounding, and her heart. She needs time. To think, to breathe, to comprehend this — whatever _this_ may be.

Anticipating more dispute, she is surprised when he, somewhat reluctantly, drops it. Perhaps something in her features leaves no room for question. “Well, let’s get back to the car, if you’re sure.”

She isn’t sure of anything at the moment. Not even the ground beneath her feet, which feels to her as if it may cave in at any moment, though he remains blissfully unaware. “I’m sure.”

*******

On the ride to the motel, she is silent. There is too much swirling around inside her mind for her to focus on what he is saying. After he switches the engine off, he turns to her, asks if she is truly alright and refuses to accept her first quick answer of an _I’m fine_.

Hand on the door handle, she sighs, purposefully avoiding meeting his familiar yet foreign eyes. “Honestly, I was just a little shaken by it all. I’m okay, I promise.” Not the whole truth, but not a lie either.

She opens the door, steps out before he has even had the opportunity to process her words. She pauses a moment, long enough to hear him say: “Night, then, Agent Scully.”

Mumbling goodnight, she closes the door and dashes through the rain to her hotel room. Her hand shakes as she tries to unlock the door, key clacking against the sides of the lock as she misses it. When she manages it, she has to restrain herself from bursting through and slamming it behind her, glad as she is to finally be alone with her thoughts.

The tears come then, rolling fast down her cheeks and dripping from her chin, heavy as the rain earlier. She managed to restrain them all this time, chooses not to fight them now. Leaning back against the door, hands over her face, she is still unable to properly comprehend what happened, what is still happening.

_What is happening?_

After some time, the power goes out. By then, she’s on the floor, heels kicked off and thrown to the side, knees pulled to her chest and cheek pressed to her knee as her hair, now dry, curls about her face. She rises slowly, lights a candle to lead her way to the bathroom.

This has to be a dream. Just a dream. Either that or an hallucination. There is no other explanation possible. She thinks back to the bridge, finds the memory to be fuzzy around the edges, almost distant, like her memory of this night. Had she hit her head? She does not think so. Perhaps one of the people who had ran past her knocked her off balance, and this... But she discounts the theory immediately. She knows what happened on the bridge: the unshakable feeling something was deeply, deeply wrong; Mulder dying; Miller and the pedestrians panicking; the blinding light.

She sets the candle on the corner of the sink, intending to splash water on her face to chase away the remnants of her tears and stains of her makeup.

But the face in the mirror does not belong to her.

It did, once. Years ago. She has seen this face recently, in pictures and those old home-videos her Mom insisted on filming over the holidays, using the camcorder Bill bought her the year after Dad died. She had said the tapes were for Charlie, so he could be a part of their celebrations even though he had not wished to be present, but she had kept the tapes and, Scully is sure, watched them herself a few times over the years. Probably more frequently after Missy... She herself watched and rewatched them in the weeks following her mother’s death, just to hear her voice and see her on the few occasions she passed the camera on to someone else. The ones that Mulder eventually put away in a box in the closet, telling her Maggie wouldn’t have wanted it: _you, spending your life watching the past._

“This can’t be happening…” She whispers, raising her hand and waving it slowly back and forth. The woman in the mirror moves in unison with her.

It can’t. It just can’t. It is impossible, inexplainable.

She stares at her reflection until she can’t stand to see it any longer, then takes the candle back into the bedroom and sets it on the nightstand. Curling up on the bed, she tries not to sleep but to think. Or not. She isn’t sure. But with the uncertainty of what sleep will bring makes her fight its inevitable approach. Her mind runs circles around itself every time she tries to think this all through, but no matter how hard she tries the clamour in her mind won’t hush. Hours pass, how many she is not sure, though by the time her mind quiets slightly she is worn and ragged, cried out and all but numb. She wonders if sleep will right whatever is happening and take her back to where she should be, even though the thought of returning to the bridge, to the uncertainty of the end and Mulder dying, makes her calming heart sink and thunder once more, her breath hitch in her throat and end in an aching, dry sob.

Eventually she relents, allowing the darkness to claim her, half hoping she will return to her present and half not.

*******

When she next opens her eyes, it is to a bright, bright light. She groans, raises a hand to shield her face.

“We lost power. Brakes, steering, everything.”

Mulder’s voice, again. Her stomach twists. She turns to him, horrified to find the same familiar and yet decades old face.

“We lost nine minutes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A revival of a long abandoned idea. Apologies if it’s a little inconsistent - it’s been sitting in my drafts for over 2 years, and while it’s mostly the same I’ve also had to heavily edit it / change some bits.
> 
> Intend to include important scenes from throughout the series as this progresses, so if you think I’ve missed anything / think a scene is pivotal, please drop a comment!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	2. Running Circles

The second time she repeats that night, from coming-to to the bright light in the car all the way to falling asleep in her motel room, is a panicked blur. She does not remember most of it knocked off-kilter as she was by finding herself in the same situation, seemingly the same moment in time, yet again.

She doesn’t leave the car or step out into the rain, as she had the first time, and as she had in the past. Instead she sits there, quiet and unmoving as if shocked beyond capability of anything but sitting in a stunned, still silence.

The next few hours are lost to her, though it ends as yesterday did, if her _yesterday_ still is yesterday. She curls up on the bed in her rented room, power out and sleep tugging insistently on her heavy limbs, trying to drag her off into the unknown once more. Still she fears it, perhaps more than she did yesterday; she does not want to return to the bridge, yet at the same time she questions what will happen if she wakes tomorrow as she did today. If all the days to come will begin as today has.

Maybe she died on the bridge and this is her afterlife, for better or for worse.

Some people’s heaven would be a do-over on life, an opportunity to relive a good past and perhaps try certain things again, see what would have happened down a different path than that which they originally took. But this is more what she envisioned hell would be: an endless loop. Of course there are moments she would give so much to revisit, but there is more than one moment in her life she wishes never to repeat...

But her mind is wandering to things that may not come to be. Perhaps tomorrow she will wake and all will be normal. She will open her eyes and find herself in her own bed, or perhaps Mulder’s, this no more than a dream that fades from her memory as she goes about a new day.

Sleep bests her, despite her efforts. Again she wakes to the light. Again, and again, and again...

********

Same words, same night, same him. Not _her_ him, but this younger version she has seen five times over now, who watches her with cautious, concerned eyes as she backs off, putting as much distance between them as she can in the interior of this small car as she presses her back flush to the car door. As she turns around to face him fully, her seatbelt twists around her awkwardly positioned form, cutting across her line of sight. Her surgeon-still hands shake hard when she moves to push it aside and she balls them into fists in her lap, eyes burning as she scrambles to pull herself together.

Thousands of thoughts swirl in her mind, their speed nauseating. She grits her teeth and latches onto those that have been at the forefront of her mind these last days, scrambling to think of answers for them: _Where the hell am I, and what’s happening-_

“We’re still in Oregon. It’s alright, Scully. We’re alright.”

It takes her a moment to realise she had spoken aloud. Though him answering her unspoken thoughts would not have surprised her as much as one might think given the surrealism of her current situation.

She forces herself to focus on only the present. What she can see, feel, hear in this exact moment: rain drumming on the car’s roof, pouring down the windows in her peripheral vision; breathing — her’s and his, her’s trembling while his remains even and calm; and him, a ghost in the flesh, a memory brought to life. The sight should send her reeling further, but struggling as she is to grasp what is happening she finds herself clinging to him, hoping to find in him a constant to ground herself with.

That hope is what drives her to speak his name before she can convince herself it isn’t him simply because it cannot be. Or _shouldn’t_ be; these past decades have taught her that what she would instinctively deem as impossible often turns out improbable instead. She fears sticking to her scepticism will only lead her in the circles, and she knows if she wastes further time following the same dead-end tracks she will go insane. So she steps into the shoes of a believer, finds they fit her better than they would have when she was first here, all those years ago.

“Yeah?” His voice is hushed, calm. Those cautious, concerned eyes have not left her face.

“Fox Mulder?” She pushes aside the seatbelt obscuring her view with a hand that still shakes slightly.

“Yes. Scully—“

“When’s your birthday?”

Taken aback, he stumbles over his words for a moment. “Uhh, October thirteenth—“

“When’s mine?”

“I— Scully, what’s wrong?”

“Just answer me.” When he does nothing but stare at her, she runs her tongue across her upper lip, bites hard on the lower as she works to keep her voice steady. “Please.”

He regains his voice. “February twenty-fourth, right?”

She is unsure if that makes her more or less inclined to believe him and all of this. On one hand, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if he did know her birthday this early on, given he had done his research on her before their first meeting. On the other, if this is all in her head, the response makes total sense since she obviously knows her own birthdate, as well as his.

“Right.” She wants to ask him more, in the hopes one will either trip him up and prove him a fake or convince her the feeling in the pit of her stomach is right.

Briefly she considers the possibility this is all a hoax, either some cruel trick from a cruel mind or something insidious. That he is not Mulder but another Van Blundht, a false and fraud here to deceive her, to whatever end. But the thought cannot find purchase in her mind and is expelled quickly: that could not explain how she got here, five times over, how he is not the only one who appears different — younger, nor how he is no longer on the verge of death.

“Do you feel okay?”

He offers a small smile. “Think I should be the one asking you that.”

“Do you feel ill?” She repeats, not harshly but stern, making it clear she wants an answer and not a quip. Her hands are near still now, breathing calmed as she makes a conscious effort to match her breaths to his. Slowly, she unentangles herself from her seatbelt, shifts out of the corner she backed herself into.

“I feel fine, Scully.” He nods toward her. “What about you?”

“I...“ She considers her next words carefully. “Off-kilter.”

“Because...?” But she stays silent, aware she can barely explain it to herself, let alone anyone else. “Of what happened?”

“What happened?”

“We lost power. Brakes, steering, everything.”

Her heart sinks upon hearing the repeated words, the scene she has been thrust into once again reverting to what seems to be its fixed course, as if all possible pathways bring them back to this conversation. “And nine minutes.”

He looks down at his watch. “Yeah and nine minutes. How did you know that?”

“I... sensed it.”

“Got any lottery predictions Scully or was that just a fluke?” Though his tone is light, she can tell he clocked her lie.

“Fluke, definitely.” She sits up straighter, positioned correctly in her seat now. “Why?”

“Thinking if you knew, we could buy a ticket—“

“Not why lottery tickets. Why do you think we lost nine minutes?” But the word is in her mind before he says it. She mouths it in tandem as he speaks:

“ _Abductees_...”

She forces her scattered mind to pay attention as he talks of time loss and abductions. When she doesn’t interrupt, as he seems to expect her to, he goes into more detail as he explains a few X Files she makes a mental note to read through, if she ever gets the opportunity.

Suddenly, without interference from either of them, the car’s engine comes to life, startling them both and ending the conversation before either is finished with it.

“I’m still waiting for your rebuttal on all of that, Agent Scully.” He murmurs, after a short silence. He has not pulled away yet, though his hands are back to ten and four on the steering wheel and the engine rumbles quietly in the background, audible beneath the still-heavy rainfall.

“I’ll give it to you when I think of it.”

“Never had you pegged as a believer. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

Her instinct is to deny the title, but given she has just spent the last few minutes giving serious thought to all he has said of UFOs and time anomalies, she holds her tongue. A smile tugs at the corners of her mouth, the first that has crossed her lips in a while, and she relaxes for the first time in days as she settles in for the drive back to the motel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you all enjoyed this chapter and stick around for the next ones. Thanks for reading, and an extra thank you to all who’ve commented and left kudos!


End file.
